Squires Family Sneak Peak

Hi lovelies

Well I've caved with all the pressure and I'm going to post a few UNTOUCHED sneak peaks of the Squires family photo shoot.

I started my photo editing class tonight and so far I'm LOVING it. It's come at a perfect time.

Denis and I "played" with pictures from the photoshoot on our flat screen tv for a few hours tonight.

So here you go...

Our makeshift bedroom in the basement...

This is what it really looks like...

This is what things looked like a few hours into the shoot...

Family shot...(we made them kiss allllllll day long!)


A little monkey swinging away....

Denis calls this one our "money shot!" - how precious is Kasey??? I made a bunch of flower headpieces to be used in future shoots. Unfortunately I didn't make them too well because I need to fix them!!!

Funny story - After we took some pictures of Kasey in these flowers we popped Kayleigh in there. She got a bit distracted and wanted to play with the fur carpet instead of the flowers so I asked her if there were any bugs in the flowers...BIG MISTAKE! After that she wasn't interested in being within 10 feet of the flowers!!! Denis kept teasing me later that night saying "couldn't you have said butterflies instead? what were you thinking saying BUGS???"

live and learn!

Weekly ramblings

Wow! Another week has come and gone. Katie and I were saying yesterday that time generally seems to fly but lately it's REALLY flying!!!

Unfortunately a cold bug has found me so I'm taking it slow today. I was supposed to meet some girlfriends for brunch but I've opted to keep my germs to myself and stay under a blanket with some meds!

I finally got around to uploading my card from Grandmaman Turpin's wedding last week.
Denis took hundreds of pictures but I only took a few. We're planning on making them an album as a wedding gift.

It was a lovely day. Grandmaman was simply glowing and Uncle Gil was like a young, excited groom! It was great spending time with D's aunts and uncles once again. There were so many laughs and good times all around.

The ceremony was at their home and then we went out to a wonderful little restaurant in Perth called The Stone Cellar. The food was amazing.

The bridal bouquet

Grandmaman Turpin (D's dad's mom) marrying Uncle Gilbert (D's mom's uncle) and D's Uncle Marcel (his dad's brother)

Doesn't Grandmaman look like the queen - Mom Turpin pointed that out...

Sealed with a kiss

Officially married after 25+ years together...

Celebrating with some bubbly
D's Aunt Jo made yummy appetizers!

Signs of spring - flowers in the restaurant

More smooching. We thought poor Grandmaman would pass out from this one!

Check out the legs on that wine...

I am starting a five-day online class tomorrow with SIS TV. I have been wanting to learn the art of photo editing for a while and this is my first attempt at it.

Lucky for me, Denis and I did a photo shoot with Katie and her sweet family yesterday. Denis ended up taking about 97% of the pictures and I was the entertainment. It was hilarious and we had SO MUCH FUN.

We even set up a fake bedroom in our studio in the basement to get some relaxed family shots. Kayleigh and Kasey were such troopers because they are both sick and didn't have the best sleep. I would like to thank our giant blue exercise ball for serving as the entertainment of the day. Kayleigh spotted it and we were able to get many smiles and giggles out of the girls with that ball!

I plan to post a few sneak peeks in the upcoming days once I've "played" with the shots in my class.

I so can't wait!

Enjoy your Sunday lovelies

an e-mail to friends...

I just sent the following e-mail to my girlfriends who happen to enjoy antiquing (sp???) -I'm sure my mom will correct my spelling if it's wrong...

_________

Don't you ever and i mean EVER ask me if i'd like to go antiquing. ARE WE CLEAR???

EVER
i'd take a root canal anyday over frickin antiquing. it was TORTURE

the only thing worse than antiquing was flea markets. we went to a few.

HAVE I MADE MYSELF CLEAR????

dirty
gross
disgusting
bad
evil
old
dirty
ewwww
hate it
hate hate hate it.

St. Patrick's Day 2001

Hello lovelies!

Happy belated St. Patrick's day!!! Did you have a good one? Ours was fun fun fun. We went to our local "suburban" pub for some green beer and eats! There was a live band playing and the ambiance was fun.

I have to say though...it was MUCH tamer than my St. Patrick's Days past. MUCH TAMER.

By far my best St. P's day was in 2001. I was much younger, much wiser and much more unattached!!!

On Friday, March 16 I was sitting with two of my friends, I"ll call them girl and boy (they were a couple) in a bar in the market. It was shortly after 8 p.m. and we had just ordered supper. As we waited, we tried to plan what we should do for St. P's day. Everything we came up with seemed to "typical" and then boy said "where's the best place in North America to celebrate St. P's day???" Why Boston of course!!! We made a spur of the moment decision to go. Literally. SPUR OF THE MOMENT.

We called the waiter over, asked for our meals to go, drove to my apartment where I packed an overnight bag then drove to Kanata to their place so they could pack their bags and we were on our way.

We left Kanata at exactly 10:30 p.m. on the 16th. We had a long drive ahead of us and so many unknowns. We had no idea what we would do and more importantly where we would stay. We finally agreed that it wasn't likely we would find a hotel room on the biggest day of the year in Boston so the decision was made to sleep in the car.

As we got just past Montreal boy shouted "oh my gosh i totally forgot...my sister is in Boston this weekend with her husband, she has a conference." WHAT A FLUKE. Boy called his mom for contact info and we called sister. There goes there romantic weekend, but fortunately they were more than happy to have the three of us stay on the floor of their room.

On the Friday night we made it as far as Magog, Quebec on the Canada-US border. We were exhausted by that point, found a TOTAL dive and got a room for the night. We woke up nice and early and continued our drive to Boston.

We met up with sister and brother in law and spent the day touring with brother in law while sister was at conference. we were pretty tired so it was pretty low key.

After supper we went back to the hotel room and sort of vegged out while watching fight club. Before we knew it, it was about 9:30 or 10 and we were ready to fall asleep. I finally said "this is ridiculous. We came all the way here, get ready we're going out."

We decided we'd try the hotel lobby and take it from there. Oh, I forgot to mention one important point...We weren't at ANY hotel as it turned out. We were at one of Boston's most popular hotels - the Park Plaza! Somehow we went from sleeping in a car to total luxury!

So down to the lobby we went and ordered a round of beers. Truth be told we were exhausted and BORING. But it was totally eating at me that we had come all that way and we weren't doing anything so i told boy to set a timer and we had to have our beers done by the time the timer went off so we could party.

We chugged our beers and went out to find a bar. Luckily there was a totally happening pub right next door so we went in there. Before we knew it, we had all gone our seperate ways and were working the room. The place was a single girl's dream! It was FULL of men in tuxdeos. FULL. It turned out they were from the Clover Club of Boston (I think that's what it was called) and they were all millionaires. I had the greatest time talking with so many men (and a few girls). I happened to meet a guy who invited me to a party he was hosting at the hotel. He said it was in the Presidential Suite. Naturally I thought (to use an Irish expression) he was takin' the piss. I told him he'd regret it if he was lying and asked who I could invite. He said "as many people as you'd like."

NEVER SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT TO ME...EVER.

I spent the next few hours going around the bar and inviting EVERYONE. I made friends with the manager of the bar, got free booze and free shirts and then Mr. Party Host came over and told me it was party time. I started rounding up the troops and I kid you not, I had an entire entourage following us into the hotel.

He wasn't lying. HE HAD THE PRESIDENTIAL SUITE. It was totally absolutely amazing. There were a few fridges and they were all FULL OF BEER. Like PACKED FULL. So we spent a glorious evening with so many cool people with an incredible view over Boston. I remember sitting chatting with people on the window sill with the window wide open. Someone played the grand piano. It was the craziest experience I tell you.

Here are a few pictures of the suite I found online...(you can see the piano in one of them).

As it turned out the guy I met at the bar had the suite because he was part of the Young Republicans of America and they were trying to find a location for their next convention. The Park Plaza was basically "wooing" them...

The later part of the night got a bit fuzzy. I remember meeting an Irish guy and finding this private lounge room and hanging out in there for a bit with him and boy and girl. The problem was we weren't supposed to be in there and nearly got caught so we had to hide out. Then we had to go find this group of girls who had been at the party because there was drama happening. I never quite understood what was going on there.

I finally packed it in for the night when I could take no more but Irish boy came looking for me and pounding on the door. Weird. Funny. Crazy.

The next day we drove back to Ottawa with oh so many stories to share!

See what I mean? It's going to be pretty hard to beat that one...

'night lovelies

me

Good friends, great times!

It's Sunday night already. I swear it feels like it was just Friday afternoon. Once again - where did the weekend go???

It has been an amazing weekend. It would be nice to make it last a bit longer...

Friday was girls' night with my former work team. They are the only part I miss about my old position and I LOVE getting together with them. Unfortunately Ginette was far too sick to join us. It always seems to happen that someone gets sick for all of our get togethers.

Nathalie had a great idea for us to try something new this time. We usually go to a restaurant and she suggested we come over to her new house instead. What a FABULOUS idea. It made the evening last MUCH longer and we could really let loose without distrubing anyone...except the rest of the neighbourhood of course!

Sylvie and her hubs picked me up at work on Friday afternoon. We had to wait for the rest of the crew to arrive at Nathalie's place so it gave us a nice chance to catch up before the chaos began!

We started with a tour of Nat's gorgeous new home and then got to meet her little kids...her pugs! Diva (a girl after my own heart) and Rocko. Oh no. I think it's Rocko. Now I can't remember for sure -am I just confusing him with Chris' dog???

Here is one of the silly dogs with a funny tongue - the tongue stays like this all the time...TOO FUNNY!

And then we had a little (ok maybe A LOT) of this...

And Francine's claws came out...

Nat and Francine...


Imitating the dog...

And Helene imitating the dog...

And having some delish appetizers...

(I bet she'll love me for posting this one...sorry sunshine :))

Our main course was Raclette (sp?)

SO AMAZINGLY YUMMY

Cheers to good times and great friendships...

Sylvie likes her forks apparently...

Sweet (albeit blurry) Sylvie...


Best friends...Francine and Sylvie

Dinner was wonderful. It was great to catch up on life and love. We have really amazing chemistry as a group and I miss having them in my daily life. We laughed so hard and a few of us even cried...It was just an all around great feeling to be reconnected.

And then we put our seriousness aside and Francine broke out the karaoke.
These girls LOVE to sing!
Helene getting warmed up...


Sylvie resting her injured back but having a great time all the same...

The three amigos taking their karaoke very seriously...

They even had the dance moves to go with it!

I felt sorry for the neighbours at this point!

Unfortunately the microphone wasn't working so they worked the remotes!!!

Is it just me or is it impossible to sing karaoke without a "microphone"?

Helene was so reserved...

oh so serious...

She switched her remote for a glass...

Flamenco?

Chicken dance?

Seizure???

Then it was time for Helene's big, intense INTENSE solo...

And I mean INTENSE

Did I mention it was INTENSE?

Nat's honey Jean-Michel (aka our cook, cleaner, waiter, helper) getting into the action...

Nat keepin' it real...

Self portrait with my sunshine...

The gang (minus Gi)...

Self portrait with Francine - my slut on the floor (don't ask)...

Our lips were a little stained from all the red wine...

Free massage!

And more singing...

I love how they are making the same faces in these pictures...

And our own personal red nose service...Francine's husband Marcel offered to be our designated driver! Such a sweetie to put up with so many drunk women! Denis took the ferry to the Quebec side and picked me up at Francine's place...at about 3 a.m.

We were having so much fun we literally lost track of time. I didn't want the night to end!

Let's just say Saturday was quite rough! I'm too old to be partying THAT hard, THAT late! I didn't get to bed until 5 a.m.

We had supper at Tanya and Keith's on Saturday night and we did a photo shoot with baby Kyle. More on that in a later post with a few sneak peaks. We're working on building our business portfolio right now. Yahooo.

OK. I'm watching the Quebec equivalent of American Idol right now (Star Academie) and I FINALLY got a joke from Friday night. Talk about delayed reaction eh???

Sorry for the wacky formatting - it's a Blogger issue, not a Diva issue. Blogger has a mind of its own sometimes I find.

Head over to the lovely Katie's blog to see a few layouts she did with pictures of me...SHE ROCKS MY SCRAPPIN' WORLD!!!

Good night lovelies and enjoy your Monday morning!!!